


Experiment In Progress

by Bitenomnom



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drama, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Love, M/M, Office Supplies, Romantic Friendship, Sherlock has bad luck with office supplies, Sherlock is a stapling maniac, injured!John, johnlock challenges gift exchange, kiss, non-chronological storytelling, weaponized binder clips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 03:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitenomnom/pseuds/Bitenomnom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When one of Sherlock's experiments sends John to hospital mere seconds after John tells him something very important, John finds himself at war on several fronts. </p><p>One his his leg. One is 221B. One is the hospital staff. One is himself.</p><p>Sherlock, for his part, mostly seems to be at war with office supplies.</p><p>Written for <a href="http://holmescombs.tumblr.com/">holmescombs</a> for the <a href="http://johnlockchallenges.tumblr.com/">Johnlock Challenges</a> Gift Exchange for the prompt "Struggling with office supplies."</p><p>Thank you to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/Morwen_Eledhwen/pseuds/Morwen_Eledhwen">Morwen_Eledhwen</a> for the beta-ing! (Of course I've gone and messed around with it so much since you read it, so I'm sure there are new and exciting problems with it now, but...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Experiment In Progress

**Author's Note:**

> You know, this story was supposed to be all Benny-Hill-theme-meriting slapstick humor, but then it became all these other things instead. I hope that's okay, and [holmescombs](http://holmescombs.tumblr.com/), I hope you like this!! I really enjoyed writing for your prompt. :)
> 
> I also made a little cover for it!

            John is currently at war.  
            He is at war on several fronts, actually.  
            First, there is his leg, which is now legitimately injured. John is currently at war with his leg, insofar as that he and it are in firm disagreement about whether or not it ought to be able to carry him places, and a number of explosions (of anger) and gunshots (maybe just shots) and treaties (consisting mostly of John promising his leg he’ll go to sleep if his leg will let him, and promising his brain he’ll go to sleep if his brain will let him) have resulted.  
            The second front is the flat, which is always a war, if John is honest, considering that Sherlock is involved and more or less allergic to cleaning up after himself. John hasn’t been to the flat in several days, and considering the state it was in when he left it (not that he did so without a certain degree of assistance, with the legitimately injured leg and all), and the state _he_ was in when he left it, he isn’t altogether keen on going back, except that the alternative is where he is right now.  
            Hospital is where he is right now, and it is the third front. Well: at times John is on the front lines, mostly battling pitying looks from hospital staff. At times, though, John is the neutral party, or maybe an emissary for both sides at once, between Sherlock and the hospital staff, who have a war of their own on right now, mostly related to Sherlock being an obnoxious git about pesky things like regulations or rules or not bringing in moldy liver samples to ask John’s opinion (which he really doesn’t need, but John appreciates the effort nonetheless).  
            John is in hospital for an injury to his right calf by a pencil.  
            It was a very, very deep puncture.  
            It was for a case.  
            It was, presumably, an accident.  
            Sherlock is sorry…at least, John is pretty sure Sherlock is sorry. He did bring in moldy liver samples, after all, and swatted away nurses while holding them out to John with repentant eyes. “What do you think?”  
           There is another front on which John is at war, and that front is himself, his chest or somewhere thereabouts, for something that he said to Sherlock, but it is hardly worth reflecting on at this point. Sherlock, at the very least, seems to agree; he hasn’t brought it up and John expects he never will—which is fine.  
            “Uh…”  
            “The victim was found disemboweled in a sewer line. How long do you think he’s been dead, based on these?”  
            “I dunno…six days?” John had sent a pitying look toward the nurses, but not _too_ pitying, because he was, after all, at war with them.  
            “I think probably no more than four, or the mold would be yellow,” Sherlock said.  
            “Then why’d you ask me?”  
            And Sherlock had left the room in a huff, turning his nose up, and while John wasn’t sorry for asking what he was fairly certain qualified as a perfectly valid question, he was sorry that he might not be seeing Sherlock again until the next day. He did have to bite back a giggle, because as Sherlock swept out the door, he was followed by a very stubborn sticky note from the flat, plastered to his arse and waving politely as the door swung shut.  
            John glances over to the side-table where Sherlock had abandoned the samples in his hurry to make a dramatic exit. None of the nurses had been brave enough to return yet. The several baggies of samples are colorful: bright greens and deep blues and snowy whites. They should probably be thrown away. John pulls the wilting flowers that Molly had brought by a couple of days ago out of the vase beside his bed, and stacks the samples atop the vase’s narrow stem. He snaps a photo with his mobile and texts it to Sherlock.  
             _Thanks for the bouquet. I hear it will be yellow tomorrow.  
_ His phone buzzes a moment later, and then buzzes again.  
 _Thirty-six hours. –SH  
_ _Don’t inhale the spores. –SH  
_ John smiles. Maybe it’ll turn out okay, after all—despite what he’d said to Sherlock before, _just_ before the injury.

  
  
It really had been an injury warranting several days’ stay in hospital, although maybe mostly because he had been punctured with a pencil of unknown origins and cleanliness, and it had hit a rather nasty spot in his calf. “Be very careful when you start walking,” John was told, not that he didn’t already know, except that Sherlock had been around at that particular moment, and his eyes gleamed with promises and intentions of forcing John to ignore this advice in favor of an exciting bout of casework. Of course, so long as John makes it clear to Sherlock that pushing it would truly be detrimental to his health, Sherlock will listen.  
            Probably.  
            Then again, Sherlock doesn’t exactly have the most fantastic track record when it comes to listening to John’s perfectly sound advice.  
            For instance, “You ought to build a safety into something like that!”  
            There was also, “You could let me do it.”  
            Famous last words.  
            Well, not _last_ words, really; he hadn’t died, and they weren’t even the last ones (those, _those_ were very different). But certainly famous toward-the-end words before being dragged off to the emergency room for an unwanted vacation, thanks very much, Sherlock Bloody Holmes.            

  
  
John had never seen Sherlock in an office supply store—he had never seen Sherlock in an office supply _aisle_ , either, but that fateful day, they had gone to an entire _store_ full of office supplies. “For optimal selection,” Sherlock had specified, and John had rolled his eyes, because at the time he had found the entire ordeal completely ridiculous. Sherlock browsed binder clips while John cruised around the rest of the store. When John had returned, Sherlock had finally selected his clips and had moved on to become enraptured by the rubber bands.  
            “You’d think you’d never seen a paperclip before,” John had said.  
            “I don’t generally bother with such things,” Sherlock answered. Which was true, John thought, and maybe the flat _could_ do with a few more folders and file cabinets and possibly a few clips to hold together case notes and newspaper clippings that tended to get mixed in with things like sofa cushions and sheet music and, for some reason, the sugar. Maybe a few sticky notes, for things such as, “Do not eat this, you will probably die,” or “You really do not want to enter this room right now, John, please keep away for the next two hours.”  
            Perhaps, “Testing in progress, enter at your own risk.”  
            John suggested as much, and Sherlock snorted.  
            “So what’s the big deal?” John had crossed his arms, watching Sherlock select some rubber bands and move on to stare at the pencils in what he would have almost pinned down as awe or wonder.  
            “I imagine this is how some feel when traversing a lot packed with new cars.”  
            “Mm?” John quirked an eyebrow, tried not to be distracted by visions of pristine curves and vivid colors, fresh off the line.  
            “You see them used, worn, all the time, every day, but never lined up, brand new and orderly and clean.” Sherlock ran his fingers along one pack of pencils. “In two weeks we could find one of these sharpened halfway down in the pocket of a murder victim. Or,” he snatched up the package, “perhaps you will use it to write me a note complaining about the livers in the refrigerator.”  
            “There are livers in the refrigerator?”  
            “No, but there might be in two weeks.”  
            They had left the store with several small plastic containers full of different varieties of binder clips, a bag of far more rubber bands than John suspected would ever be put to use in 221B except possibly for Sherlock getting bored and launching them at John (which was, admittedly, better than shooting bullets into the wall), the pack of pencils, a box of paperclips, and, at John’s request, a pad of sticky notes. Oh: and, of course, one grin from ear to ear, belonging to Sherlock.  
            “Brilliant,” he’d said, looking into the bag.  
            John rolled his eyes. “You are far too excited about this.”  
            “It’s an excellent case.”  
  
  
             
            It _is_ an excellent case, in fact. Even John had been interested, up until the being shot through the leg with a pencil bit.  
            Sharpened halfway down the pocket of a murder victim, Sherlock had said. Or John could be using it to write a note, Sherlock had said. But no, no, instead it was halfway in John’s calf.  
            John is fairly certain Sherlock is still off having the time of his life solving it, while John is stuck here in a hospital bed, not that he’s about to risk going back to the flat anyway, not while Sherlock is working on this. Sherlock, while a perfectly fantastic man with a perfectly fantastic brain and really probably just about anything else, too (except, in general, social skills), the lucky git, has been having just enough difficulty constructing the materials for this case that while it cannot rightly be called a war, like John Watson’s wars against his leg and the flat and the hospital, it can certainly be called something else, maybe a skirmish or a scuffle or a struggle. John is fairly certain, for instance, that his injury was not inflicted intentionally, but still Sherlock is responsible. He is fairly certain that Sherlock did not mean to leave a sticky note reading _Experiment in progress_ on his arse, but he still did that, too, just now when he was here. He is more than fairly certain that the eighteen staple-holes in the copies of the papers he had brought by with the liver samples were not placed there intentionally but rather a result of Sherlock’s general lack of experience with such useless contraptions as staplers. (But he had, apparently, been experimenting with them. John would bet money that all of the staples he’d kept in the lone precious supply drawer of the flat had gone mysteriously missing. Again: not a war, but definitely some minor clash. John thinks of new cars in a parking lot, and of new staples being purposelessly crimped or driven into the wall like bullets, and cringes.)  
  
  
  
            “You’re back,” John says. Sherlock picks up the baggies of liver samples and staples them together in several places before throwing them in the rubbish bin.  
            “Solved it,” Sherlock says. He leans forward to hover over John’s leg, to prod at it gently. John is, in theory, being released tomorrow.  
            “Stop that,” John says, and tries to jerk his leg back, and winces when he does so. Sherlock winces with him. John hasn’t told Sherlock that he’s getting out tomorrow, although that means next to nothing, since Sherlock has probably deduced it anyway.  
            Sherlock stands abruptly. “I will return.”  
            John appropriately translates this to, “I will return if I remember to, which will be the case unless I find something particularly interesting and incriminating in the lobby to pester someone about.”  
            But Sherlock does return, half an hour later, with a bag of something delicious.  
            “Thai?” John asks.  
            “Of course,” Sherlock says, as if it is the most natural thing in the world. Up until now, Sherlock has left John to enjoy the hospital food on his own, for the most part. “I did say I solved it. We usually have takeaway and a film after that.”  
            “I’m afraid the film will have to be delayed,” John says, because it is probably the least intimidating thing he can think of to say after being overwhelmed by the—well. The sentiment of it all, really: the Thai, the quiet pride in Sherlock’s eyes with himself for having gone to the effort of doing this for them, rather than louder and more overt boasting…the “ _we usually_.”  
            “I know,” says Sherlock.  
            “We really don’t have to watch one. Guess it kind of defeats the purpose if we’re not using it to wind down from a case, doesn’t it? By the time I get back…”  
            Sherlock sends John what is probably supposed to be a withering glare, except that Sherlock is the one who looks withered. He opens his mouth and before he says it John hears something like, _Of course I don’t want to watch your stupid films, John,_ but Sherlock doesn’t say that, because that’s not quite right. Then John hears, _If I’m not already on another case, of course,_ because that’s more like it, because while Sherlock certainly couldn’t care any less about what John made them watch, he definitely cares at least a little about those quiet couple of hours with John. John has deduced this from the rather substantial number of observations he has gathered over time, with each case that wasn’t immediately followed by another, by the pliancy and willingness with which Sherlock settled onto the sofa with John. It was how they wound down: or how John wound down, anyway. A cab ride home was usually about enough for Sherlock; for him, their dinner and movie together was something like the several hours of heaven between Sherlock, manic and on the case, and Sherlock, shooting the wall or stapling the wall or god-knows-what he does to the wall while John’s not around.  
            But Sherlock, this time, still looks a little wound up. “Of course we’ll watch one of your awful spy films when you get back,” he huffs. “I believe you threatened me with a slow and painful death if I hadn’t seen some particular one by the end of the month.” What Sherlock is actually trying to say is something like, _You’d damn well better be out of here by the end of the month,_ John thinks, is pretty sure. Or he might be trying to say something like, _I’ll deal with whatever you choose to subject me to, John, because I’m sorry_ —but John wouldn’t be so presumptuous, no matter how sorry Sherlock probably is.  
            “Yeah,” John says. “That’s right, I did say that, didn’t I?”  
            Sherlock nods, and shifts uneasily in the chair he has pulled up beside John’s bed.  
            “So you said you solved it?” John finally says, pulling noodles into his mouth.  
            “I did.”  
            “You still seem pretty keyed up.”  
            “I am.”  
            “Want to talk about it?”  
            “It was the coworker, Davison,” Sherlock says. “He got the perfect vantage point from his cubicle, yet managed to avoid suspicion because there was no obvious way for someone to have done it from his position. However, the walls proved to be slightly movable, and since the projectile was so slim he…” Sherlock’s face fell. “What?”  
            “That’s not what I meant,” John says through a throat closing in nervousness. Sherlock has had the Davison theory for days. If that was what Sherlock had concluded, he had possibly solved the case two hours after John had gone to hospital, and been avoiding bringing it up all this time. Or: he has been avoiding bringing up anything having to do with the case at all. John looks away.  
            “What did you mean, then?” Sherlock asks.  
            John can’t bring himself to say anything, so he nods toward his leg.  
            “Ah! Yes, that definitely supported my theory.”  
            “Not. What. I. Meant.”  
            “I…”  
            John doesn’t want to talk about what he actually meant, not if Sherlock doesn’t—and, it would seem, he most definitely does not—but John does have a few other things he wants to talk about. “You _shot_ me in the _leg_ , Sherlock, after I—”  
            “It was—”  
            “I know damn well what _it was_ ,” John’s throat emits a slight growl as he says it. “I was _there_.”

  
This is how it happened:  
            John went to Tesco. John came back from Tesco. A sticky note on the door to 221B read _Experiment in progress._ (Which, John thought, was better than nothing, except of course that it hardly gave him any sort of warning for what to expect whatsoever.) John removed the sticky note to remind him to suggest that Sherlock be a little more specific with his notices and entered the flat. Sherlock had ripped into the rubber bands, had laid them all out across the edge of the table, had torn open the binder clips, had laid them across the table behind the rubber bands, had torn open the pencils, and had laid them out behind the binder clips.  
            “Ah! John,” Sherlock had said. “Hand me one of the large clips.” John had set the note on the table and obliged. Sherlock had his laptop beside him, glanced over at it. “Actually, I’ll be needing three of them.”  
           “Find something, then?”  
            “This model 1 is one Lestrade found on Davison’s home internet history. It consists of supplies the suspect would have had readily available to him—including the ones we bought, ones like those he’d had in his desk—easily hidden among his things or in the rubbish bin afterward. And according to the tests on this website, the projectile has clocked in at well over thirty meters per second using this model.”  
            “The projectile being the pencil?” John had asked, not knowing he was about to find out the hard way. Well: he already knew; a pencil through the eye socket was how the victim had died. But he was about to find out much more…personally.  
            “Yes.” A pause; Sherlock glanced at his laptop. “Four medium-sized clips.”  
            John handed them over, watched Sherlock struggle to pull out the little wire handles.  
            “It has been shown to puncture through cardboard and metal soda cans. Naturally, there’s been no human testing.”  
            “And naturally, there _will_ be none,” John arched an eyebrow, daring Sherlock to so much as think otherwise.  
            “I’ve prepared alternate targets,” Sherlock had said, and John had simply taken a deep breath, let it go slowly, and then proceeded to the refrigerator to put away the most perishable of the groceries. When he was done, he found he still wasn’t prepared to face the small armada of office supplies on the table, so he grabbed the rest of the groceries and shelved them appropriately, and then said, “I’m going to take a shower.”  
            Sherlock dismissed him with a wave.

  
           Here, later, at the hospital, after the lining up of the office supplies and the building and John’s shower, and after a great many more things, Sherlock blinks at John a few times. “And you’re expecting an apology.”  
           “You’re all hyped up because you feel guilty. You solved the case days ago and you’re just trying to cover it up.”  
            “Well, it was an accident,” Sherlock says.

  
            And it _was_.  
            When John had returned back downstairs, cozy in his robe and clean from his shower, he set to making himself a cup of tea. Sherlock was still at work.  
            “Look!” Sherlock exclaimed after several minutes more, and John turned around to the sight of a small arrangement of rubber bands and binder clips that could be pulled back and released. Sherlock loaded one of the pencils into it and pulled back, and released it in the direction of the sitting room. It flew to the other side of the room, which was, indeed, quite a distance, but began wobbling slightly toward the end of its trajectory, and hit the wall harmlessly. “It’d have to be short-range,” Sherlock thought aloud to himself.  
            John stared across the room at the pencil. “Ought to have some sort of a safety for something like that,” he let out a low whistle.  
            “Promising, isn’t it?”  
            “Yes,” John agreed absently, more than a little distracted by the fact that if the array on the table was any indication, Sherlock had somehow managed to break seven rubber bands and three binder clips over the last half hour in his attempt to construct this device. Several of his fingers were very, very red. One of the small clips had managed to attach itself to his sleeve. John suddenly wished he had been watching the process. “Right, well, I’m going to start writing up the Hunter case.” He pulled his laptop from the table, where Sherlock had left it, and carried it over to his chair in the sitting room.  
            “I was going to use that to log data,” Sherlock complained.  
            “Use your own damned laptop.”  
            “Mrs. Hudson is borrowing it.”  
            John opened his mouth to argue, but then processed what Sherlock had said, and smiled to himself, feeling warmed by something more than his tea. “You can take it in a minute, then. Just let me check my email.”  
           “Mm,” Sherlock seemed to find this amenable, and scooped up the pencils and carried them into the sitting room, setting up a space on the table within viewing range of John. He nearly waltzed over to the refrigerator to extract something from the crisper drawer. John was expecting him to return with body parts; instead, he came back with two steaks.  
            John buried his face in his hands. “ _That_ was why you asked me to buy steak?”  
            “Why else would I have?”  
           “I dunno, thought you’d maybe taken a healthy, admittedly unexpected, interest in eating.”  
            “Nonsense. I requested bone-in for a reason.”  
            “Couldn’t you have gotten some sheep eyes or something instead?” That was a question John had never anticipated asking in relation to steak.  
            Sherlock waved his hand. “I’ve got some human eyeballs already.”  
            “Why not use those, then? You know, since they’re where the victim was actually hit?”  
            “Preliminary tests, John,” Sherlock said. “I have been reminded several times that the supply of human eyes at any given time is not infinite. Even if the patients who are vegetables anyway aren’t going to be using theirs anytime soon,” he huffed, and retrieved some twine. “Once I’ve gotten the hang of the device and an idea of how its projectiles deflect off bony regions, I shall get out the eyes and do some more precise testing. He glanced toward the skull on the mantelpiece. “He’s going to help.”  
            “Well, thank god I’m not replacing him in that capacity.” John rolled his eyes, resumed attention on his laptop as Sherlock suspended the steaks between his chair and the sofa with a thick piece of twine over, blessedly, a layer of newspaper that he had thought to place beneath them. He arranged his supplies carefully on the table, lining up the sharpened pencils.  
           Sherlock loaded the first and pulled it back on the rubber band. When he released it, it flung off clumsily onto the sofa. John chuckled. Sherlock growled to himself and loaded in another pencil; this one flew true for half the trip to the steaks, and then began wobbling as the pencil he’d launched across the room from the kitchen had done.  
            “Feel like someone would’ve noticed if there were three failed attempts before the murder,” John chortled. Then he said with a grin, “You could let me do it. _I_ can aim.”  
           “Shut up,” Sherlock said, and loaded another, holding the base of the launcher steady between his fingers.

  
            From beside John’s hospital bed, Sherlock retrieves a miniature stapler from his pocket. “I can’t apologize for physics, John.” He staples John’s pillowcase shut.  
            “What the hell are you doing?” John asks, trying to swallow down the knot in his throat.  
            “Tests,” Sherlock says.  
            Of course. “Dare I ask?”  
            “Probably not,” Sherlock answers. He staples along the edge of the lid of his Thai takeaway box.  
            “But you’ll tell me anyway?”  
            “Effectiveness of staple penetration in various materials.”  
            “You said you solved the case. Anyway, the model didn’t even involve a stapler, did it?”

  
            It hadn’t, obviously.  
            John had coughed as Sherlock lined up his shot in the sitting room. “Sherlock?”  
            “Mm?”  
            John cleared his throat slightly, apparently suddenly shy. Sherlock recognized the frequently used tactic: Say something difficult to him while he is focused on something else, in the hopes that it will soften the blow or in the hopes that it will pass by unnoticed, so that the assailant could make a clean escape. Sherlock had been looking through a microscope the day Mycroft strolled into his room and said, “I ought to tell you that our father died this afternoon; I’ll be in the sitting room if you’d like to discuss it,” and then left before Sherlock could finish focusing on the red blood cells and lean back to speak.  
            This would be something rough, then, something he wouldn’t like. But this was John, and there was plenty that John put up with that no one else would—eyeballs in the refrigerator, for one—so this might be particularly unpleasant. Sherlock braced himself, continued lining up his shot. Maybe _I’m moving in with What-Was-Her-Name, my girlfriend_ —no, they’d broken up some time ago, and he hadn’t found another since. He wouldn’t be moving, surely. Perhaps he’d broken a piece of Sherlock’s equipment—no, Sherlock would have noticed. But it could still be any number of things.  
            Maybe _My mum’s dying; I need to go halfway across the country for a few months to take care of her.  
_             Maybe…maybe, _Mycroft told me to tell you that your mum died._  
            Maybe worse. Maybe much, much worse.  
            Maybe _Sherlock, I’ve been diagnosed with…_  
            Sherlock refused to fill in the blank; he tensed up in anticipation of John’s words. “What?”  
            “I, er…this is really hard to say the way I mean it without an explanation afterward, okay? So promise you’ll hear me out.” _Very_ bad, then, if John felt the need to explain himself. Sherlock felt his fingers quiver and willed them still, held the shot back until John spoke again in case there was some tension he very suddenly needed to release into the steak suspended across the room. “Very well.”  
            “I think I might...like I said, this isn’t…”  
            “Out with it, John!” he nearly snarled. Did he _know_ how much he was torturing Sherlock?  
            “I think I might love you.”

  
            Here, now, Sherlock fiddles with his stapler and considers John’s question about the stapler. No, it’s not for the case; yes, he’s already solved it; no, this model didn’t involve a stapler, or staples, for that matter. “It’s for an…experiment. Might be useful data to have later."  
            John’s eyebrows rise. After a moment, he licks his lips. “You know,” he says to Sherlock quietly, cautiously, glancing down at his leg, “this might cause my limp to…”  
            “ _Obviously_ ,” Sherlock snaps, suddenly aggravated. His attention returns abruptly to the stapler. He attempts to staple the box shut, but instead staples his sleeve to the box. Sherlock yanks the box from his sleeve, tries to pry the staple open to free it from the sleeve of his jacket, and then, midway through, seems to realize what he is doing and the intensity with which John is staring at him. He stands up quickly and then observes that one of the half-closed staples driven into the box has caught on his trousers. The dinner he probably wasn’t going to eat anyway spills down over his trouser leg, and he storms out. The nurse across the room wrinkles her nose. John laughs. John pauses. John’s leg hurts.

  
            As Sherlock had glanced at John, after John spilled out his confession, Sherlock turned his body slightly.  
            As he turned his body, his fingers moved with it.  
            With his fingers moved the launcher; with the movement of his fingers, their pressure slackened.  
            The pencil flew from the launcher, traveled a meter and a half, and then stopped.  
            It stopped in John’s leg, embedded, by John’s dazed estimate, about two inches in.  
           Sherlock’s eyes widened. In the slow motion that was the next several seconds, John expected that Sherlock would demand that John stop being so _maudlin_ and clean himself up and treat himself—he _was_ a doctor, after all—so that Sherlock could get back to his experiment. Instead, Sherlock reached forward gingerly, brushed his fingers over John’s unclothed and punctured leg. His senses heightened under crisis, John had felt the gentle bending of each hair on his leg, the release of pressure as each snapped back into place.  
            “I’ll call 999,” Sherlock had whispered, or maybe just mouthed, and pulled out his mobile. “Stay still,” he’d said, and John, calm—unsurprisingly, really—did. After Sherlock placed the call, his voice tinged with something John was having a difficult time identifying whilst staring at the pencil embedded in his leg and the blood gathering ‘round the edges and trickling down his ankle—not because of the blood or of panic, but sheer force of disbelief—John let Sherlock scoop him up from the chair, one arm hooked under his knees, the other wrapped around his shoulders, and carry him down the stairs to the front door, and wait silently for the ambulance to arrive. He looked into John’s eyes for a moment, and then flicked his own gaze away, swallowing something down his throat. John’s mind, scrambling with something to do with the spare adrenaline, reeled at what it could have meant, that glance, that swallow, pictured what Sherlock would have said, just then, if it hadn’t gotten caught in his throat.  
            Maybe, “I’m sorry, John.”  
            Maybe, “I’m _so_ sorry, John.”  
            Maybe, “Me, too, John.”  
            But maybe that was wishful thinking.

  
            Now alone in hospital, forty minutes after Sherlock had swept out, John receives two more text messages.  
             _Recover soon, if convenient. –SH  
_ _If inconvenient, recover soon all the same. –SH_

  
                                                                                                                         
  
            John returns to the flat the next day, opting not to warn Sherlock (although, he thinks again as he has done before, Sherlock has probably deduced the exact hour of his return—or, perhaps, has been relentlessly pestering the hospital to give him a release date and time). He climbs up the stairs with a hobble, leg still very much tender. His right leg, too—at least this time the limp isn’t psychosomatic. Probably, though, the return of the motions of limping, the memories of what had caused his psychosomatic limp in the first place, will stir up old nightmares, maybe even the old limp itself. Sherlock had surely realized this the moment it happened: Sherlock’s (relative) softness, Sherlock’s unshakeable guilt, they weren’t because John has been hurt—because John gets hurt all the time. They weren’t even because of what John had said, because that wasn’t the way Sherlock worked. They were there, _are_ there, because John is hurt because Sherlock hurt him; John is hurt and in a way that hurts John more than it would hurt someone else. Sherlock had taken John’s limp away; Sherlock had brought it back—at least for a while. A week, John thought, or two, if physical recovery would banish it, if his mind didn’t take over and twist it around again. He sorely hoped he wouldn’t need to return to using his cane.  
            The _Experiment in progress_ sticky note on the door of 221B has made a comeback—clearly the exact same one as had been originally on the door and then on the table and then on Sherlock’s arse. John winces. He’s not sure he’ll be prepared for another experiment for at least another day; and anyway, what had happened to, “Of course we’ll watch one of your awful films when you come back, John”? Maybe Sherlock isn’t expecting John, after all.  
            John leans into the door and opens it cautiously.  
            Sherlock is fast asleep on the sofa.  
            John approaches as quietly as he can with his uneven gait, dodging office supplies scattered all over the floor like a minefield, binder clips and paperclips and pencils, and finds that on the table beside the sofa Sherlock has laid out a large, thick piece of cardboard, covered in stapled-down rubber bands. He kneels down and traces his finger along the path into which a string of staples has molded one of the rubber bands. It is a little familiar, the pattern, like something he’s seen before. All of the blue rubber bands have been laid along one squiggling path, widening as it moves toward the right side of the cardboard.  
            Oh.  
            “It’s a map of London,” Sherlock mutters, and then, “I wasn’t expecting you back this early.”  
            “You weren’t?”  
            Sherlock shakes himself awake and glances at his mobile, sitting up. “Oh. I suppose it isn’t quite as early as I thought it was.”  
            “I was surprised I didn’t wake you,” John says, tracing his fingers along the demarcations formed by the major streets. He supposes he isn’t altogether _that_ surprised about Sherlock’s complete refusal to talk about what John had said—not in hospital, and, apparently, not here. Maybe not ever. Well, that was better than it could have gone, anyway.  
            “It’s not done yet,” Sherlock says quietly.  
            “The map?” John looks toward it. “You’re going to go into more detail than you’ve already got?” His index finger comes to rest above Baker Street. What would he do, use thread for the little neighborhood roads or outlines of major buildings?  
            “In a fashion.” Sherlock leans forward over the map with John. He pulls up a box of pins that John recognizes as having previously been used on the bulletin board on the wall, while Sherlock is working on a particularly challenging case. He lays his hand over John’s and then gently moves it, holding it within his left hand while with his right he presses one pin in just beside the segment of rubber band that is Baker Street. He takes another and pushes it in nearby before wrapping his fingers around John’s hand and placing it back on Baker Street. Sherlock retrieves another pin and puts it in by St. Bart’s. Finally, he looks up to John.  
            “What’s the second one?”  
            “Angelo’s.”  
            “Oh.”  
            Sherlock gathers up a few more pins. “Where else?”  
            “What is this a map of?” John asks.  
            Sherlock hands John a pin, and points to a completely different area. When John hesitates, Sherlock maneuvers his hand over, and guides the pin into the spot. “The pool,” he explains.  
            John takes a pin and hesitates, looking over the map, and settles over a point he last saw on his laptop screen from a phone’s GPS. If Sherlock took thread and outlined buildings, there would be two of them here; but, thankfully, there weren’t, for John wouldn’t have known whether to put the pin where he’d shot from, or in the same building as the brilliant man he’d saved. John’s eyes flit up to meet Sherlock’s.  
            “Perfect,” Sherlock says, and then, after a moment, “Your leg must hurt.” John has been kneeling before the table for more than a few minutes.  
            John considers denying it; it’s not the worst pain, and he certainly doesn’t want to seem like he is going out of his way to make Sherlock feel guilty. It had been, after all, an accident, much as John had been wishing for an apology. “A bit,” he finally says.  
            “Come here,” Sherlock lifts himself back to the sofa and pats the spot beside him. “Or aren’t we watching your terrible film?”  
            “Could we get some dinner first?” John asks, taking a seat. He places a pin at the spot where he and Sherlock had gone for Chinese after the second night of their acquaintance—of their friendship.  
            Without a word, Sherlock stands and paces to the kitchen. He returns after a minute, flushing slightly, and John can hear a faint sizzle from the kitchen. “Did you set something on fire?”  
            “No.”  
            “Then what’s that noise?”  
            “Don’t mind that,” Sherlock asserts, and the corners of his mouth lift as he notes the new pin. “What are you subjecting me to this evening?”  
            “You pick.”  
            “I fear I’ll lose no matter what.”  
            John smiles.

  
  
  
            By the end of the film, there are thirty new pins in the map and used plates balanced on the remaining unused strip of the table, now more or less emptied of their previous contents—two steaks, put to their proper use, since Sherlock had never gotten around to stabbing them through with pencils. (“I never needed to,” Sherlock said, “since you proved it was possible for the device to do significant damage.”) Sherlock had brought them out quite nearly blushing, mumbling something that John was fairly certain was an apology. John had flushed in return, and their fingers had brushed as Sherlock handed John his plate. It had been, in truth, a surprisingly edible steak, considering Sherlock had supervised its creation. It had also been perhaps one of the kindest gestures John had received in a very long time—especially since it had come from Sherlock. It reminds John of a few dates he’d had, homemade dinner and a movie. He finds he suddenly doesn’t mind Sherlock’s complete lack of acknowledgement of John’s confession—not if they still have this.  
            Sherlock and John are sitting on the sofa, leaning over the map together as the credits roll. John isn’t sure if they had ever really paid attention to the film after Sherlock had thought of another pin to place, and, after some hesitation, told John about the immense and unfamiliar panic that had overcome him when he realized that John had been kidnapped by the smugglers. They had continued in this way, with quiet little explanations for each pin placed, ways their hearts had stirred in fear or wonder or warmth in each location.  
            “You had a note on the door,” John finally says when the DVD returns to the menu. “The same one from before. _Experiment in progress_. I didn’t notice any…”  
            “Ah,” Sherlock says, “yes.”  
            “And this hardly qualifies as an experiment,” John nods toward the map.  
            “Doesn’t it?”  
            “It’s more like…” he pauses.  
            Sherlock tilts his head to look at John: open, expectant, hesitant.  
            “I dunno. It’s…art. It’s a map of us.” He meets Sherlock’s eyes. “But that’s hardly much of an experiment.”  
            Sherlock shifts around nervously, bumping shoulders with John as he does. “I disagree,” he whispers, and runs his fingers over the map, over the pins. John lifts his chin, waiting for an explanation. “I had meant to put in some of the pins myself before you arrived,” Sherlock finally says. “And if you caught on to what they meant, well…and if not…then…”  
            “That’s not a very clear hypothesis,” John elbows him.  
            “I think it was a success,” Sherlock ignores John’s comment, leaning yet closer, his shoulder now pressing against John’s. “But I’d like to make sure.”  
            “Okay,” John breathes, “yeah. Sure. Good idea.”  
            Sherlock takes John’s right hand in his left and raises his right hand to John’s face, rubbing a thumb over his cheek before leaning in and planting one firm and chaste kiss on John’s lips, pulling back slowly, as if savoring something for what might be the last time.  
            “Did you like that?”  
            John flushes. “Maybe. Yeah. You?”  
            “I think so.” Sherlock reaches for the pin box and tilts it toward John.  
            “That’s a lot of pins we’ve got left,” John notes.  
            “Yes,” Sherlock says, “it is.” He sets them back down beside the map. “And a lot of London, too.” He shifts to look back to John. “We may run out of pins first.”  
            John grins and then glances around the sitting room. “You’re going to clean up this minefield well before I even _think_ of letting you into another office supply shop.”  
            “I’d like to see you try to stop me,” Sherlock says, before he can even think about John’s leg, about John’s possible returning limp, about John’s likely worsening nightmares. Luckily, however, at that moment, he stands up and takes a half-step toward the door in demonstration before triggering one of the land mines, a binder clip that compresses under his shoe and then springs up just high enough to snap against his eye. He glances around warily at the other clips strewn along the floor, some already victims of his experiments, missing one metal bit or another, some intact and ready to avenge their fallen comrades. The one that had hit his eye bounces innocently back onto the carpet just in front of him. Sherlock frowns at it, turns his nose up, and retreats to the sofa beside John.  
            John laughs, experimentally leans in and bumps one shoulder up against Sherlock. “Don’t think I have to.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Model and data inspired by this: http://www.officeguns.com/gunadv_super_maul.html


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